Comments on: It’s A Bomb

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 17:50:06 +0000

The one thing no one seem to consider possible is to warn people that the new version is going to break current versions, or to test against the most common applications in use to see what will happen, Issuing a new OS in March that ‘breaks’ Turbo TAX or in June that breaks Quickbooks would be a definite downer,

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 05:38:14 +0000

The big problem they have is all the legacy code. They had the opportunity to get rid of it with the tablet version of Windows that eventually became Windows 8, and gulped and flinched and put it back in. I’m not sure whether to praise them or curse them, I know I curse Apple plenty when they break my programs by removing old functions that have been superseded by new functions. Is it better to have an OS that’s (relatively) stable and fast but that regularly breaks older programs, or is it better to have an OS that doesn’t regularly break older programs, but has so much cruft in it that any patches or fixes tend to break as much stuff as they fix? SIGH. If this was an easy job, they wouldn’t be paying me so much money to do it….

– Badtux the Software Engineer Penguin

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 17:38:27 +0000

They have allowed it to grow so large that no one can understand all of the interactions. They really need a clean rewrite using standardized coding methods and procedures so that the source is documented and people know where to go to fix things. There is entirely too much by guess and by gosh in Windows.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 07:41:05 +0000

Yep. Sadly, whilst I was able to fix ME (by transplanting 98 SE code and essentially merging the bit’s that worked in either. (Eg. Memory leaks were much less of an issue in ME than 98.) The code base for W10 is just way too huge for any single person to even attempt to understand, assuming they get the code! It took me almost a year to do the 98SE/ME hybrid.

And Juanita… Welcome to the club! 😉 And yes, I do realise that is a very backhanded compliment! 😀 And I sure do understand your frustration & annoyance with M$! I hope you’ve found some help with our regular rants! 😀 Expect many more! I don’t see these problems getting better or being reduced any time soon! *SIGH*

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 23:23:25 +0000

I think it must be related to exactly what choices were made when the machine was made, and what device drivers were are used. It is a crap shoot dependent on the exact combination of devices you have. How in the hell can a wireless mouse keep the sucker from booting. I don’t even bother to install drivers for the Logitech keyboards and mice I use. I plug in the receiver and they work in all flavors of Windows and both flavors of Linux I use.

FUBAR, even more than we normally get from M$. This is Windows ME level of FUBAR.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 03:38:38 +0000

Hmmm. Yes, after the Annniversary update, I noticed that my PC takes twice as long to boot now. I enabled the startup notifications (shows what is loading as it boots) and it pauses now and then, but no idea why. There are several theories on various forums. *shrug*

I use several FOSS tools where I can. And some have been problematic. though kudos to the FOSS coders & user community, they usually have it fixed pretty fast. 🙂 The commercial app’s take longer. One of the gfx app’s I use has got their product kinda working, but have announced that they are working fast as possible on a complete rewrite to make it work on W10 and to ensure easier/faster updates in future. They plan to have it ready before year end. They were planning a new version anyway with requested new features, but were planning to leverage the existing code. I have had other companies say similar things. Another is Blender (a FOSS 3D tool I use). GIMP also had some erratic crashing issues earlier, they tracked it to a DLL issue win 10 had for whatever reason. A couple recent updates seems to have fixed it. Inkscape had a bug with W10 where previously created files lost some detail when opened with Inkscape on W10 but not earlier Windoze. *shrug*

Several bugs I’ve been tracking seem to be either related to DLL incompatibilities (even created by (mainly older) M$ “Studio” dev tools), or because M$ completely changed the way W10 authenticates app’s & DLL’s. It seems that if you use app’s that have nothing whatever in common, you should be OK. Maybe. Actually… it’s a crap shoot! Some people have no issues, others have some, others have nothing but trouble.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 00:51:47 +0000

It was delivered with Windows 10, not upgraded to it, which apparently makes all the difference, but it still screwed up on the graphics adapter. Juanita needed to remove a wireless mouse to get her machine to boot after an update. The thing is you could probably write an OS if you wanted to take the time, but most people are users and just want to use it, not rebuild it.

I have the Win 10 box running again, but it is the slowest booting machine in my collection – slower than my RP3 or Win XP, and it is on the box with the fastest CPU and the only Quadcore. At a price of $0 it was too expensive. Given the time I’ve had to expend to get it to work, not counting the time I need to spend to fix whatever they did that killed the ability of my Toshiba to update, it is a damn bloody expensive OS.

By: JuanitaM

JuanitaM — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 18:31:14 +0000

The Anniversary Edition wouldn’t install at first, I just kept getting a blue screen with a never-ending circle. Finally, I hitched up on a website noting that any peripherals attached could cause a problem. Sure enough, removing my wireless mouse solved the problem. It still took a very looooong time to update. And, as usual, the update changed some of my personal settings to something that apparently pleased it better, just because…just because it can, I guess.

You guys would have picked up on that right away most likely, but all my other prior MS updates did just fine without having to remove my wireless mouse. Thank goodness for my Note 5 phone. If I had been without another internet source for clues, I would have been sunk. And I NEVER EVER go to the Microsoft site for a real answer either. Tried that once, and eight hours later, I ended up having to format/reinstall my machine that had been working perfectly before trying to install Office (which should have been a simple deal, for crying out loud). Those guys are useless to the general public.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 08:18:25 +0000

Let’s see, what am I running on my little HP with Windows 10? Ah yes. Java JDK. IntelliJ for Java development. Visual Studio for NodeJS development. VNC to talk to my Linux desktop, XMobiTerm to talk to my Linux servers and run virt-manager remotely via X11. Chrome, Thunderbird, LibreOffice (I don’t run Microsoft Office). Fortinet SSL VPN to VPN into the office. GNU Emacs for Windows, mostly to look at JSON’s via its JSON mode which includes a reformatter. VirtualBox to run a Fedora 24 VM to do some Linux development. TortoiseHG and mercurial to do source control. The Android SDK for compiling our Android app. Oh yeah, VMware vSphere client to talk to my ESXi servers.

But hey, I don’t do any work on the machine, right? :).

I did have one bit of weirdness with my graphics adapter after their Anniversary Edition update, but removing the driver, rebooting it, and letting Windows re-find and re-initialize the driver fixed it. Windows has always been prone to stupid crud like that though.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 19:51:45 +0000

I use Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, and LibreOffice on all of my machines – Windows XP to 10 & Linux. The Windows XP & 7 machines use the same version, but Windows 10 uses a different version of LibreOffice.

If I was the manager for M$ applications, I would be pushing for making everything usable on Linux, OSX, IOS, and Android, so I had a viable product line when Windows cratered. Windows 7 will probably get extended like XP did. I mean, come on, you’re giving something away and you have to trick people into accepting it?!? WTF?